Should I Be Flattered? Part Two

Text Messages at 3:47 AM

HIM: come ovr now? depressed. need u.


YOU: i txted u a week ago. no response. u wer def supposed to meet me. where were u?


HIM: plz. r u coming now or not? plz.

He needs you at 3:47 in the morning? If this is a common and frequent situation in your “relationship”, then something is horribly wrong. And when you need him, where is he?


If he’s so sad when you’re not around, why doesn’t he want to see you at 8AM at Starbucks? Why doesn’t he want to have lunch with you at the park? Dinner and a movie? “I need you” calls/text messages shouldn’t always be in the 12AM to 5AM zone. A lot of us like to be needed and there’s nothing wrong with that. Our phone goes off in the early morning and you’re just happy that he finally called. You’re pleased that you’re (supposedly) the only one he’ll confide in. But, you should not be flattered when:

1. He doesn’t respond to any of your “I need you” calls and then gets mad when you don’t respond to his.

2. You show up, and he’s not as sad or distraught as he alluded to being on the phone.

3. You show up, and it’s all about the physical (you know what I mean).


To the girls who are in—or believe that they can handle—a purely physical relationship: I commend you greatly for knowing and believing that you have command over your own mind. However, the main reason I don’t recommend friends with benefits and physical relationships of that manner is because things get blurry. Why place myself in a situation where I’ll undoubtedly have to struggle between my mind and my heart? And personally, I’m not comfortable with what I cannot identify.

What blurry things?

a. The boundaries of the relationship. What he is expected to do. What you are expected to provide. When is it appropriate? What is proper? When to stop? If he gets a “real” girlfriend, is it over?


b. When it’s okay to feel things. Honestly, your own feelings get blurry. You don’t know when it’s okay to feel hurt or angry at him. You check with your friends: “He didn’t call back. I should be angry, right?” It’s not like the two of you signed a contract, you don’t know what to expect. Subsequently, neither does your heart.



These elements get blurry because they are never discussed. Everything’s fun. Spontaneous. That can be great, but let’s compare your relationship to a car. Before your road trip, the two of you decide to cover all the windows and the windshield with duct tape. Sounds ridiculous, but it's also crazy and fun and something to talk about with your friends, so you do it. You start to drive. And you can't see anything. This isn’t about working with the unfamiliar or the unknown. This isn’t a new adventure or a challenging road you’ve never tackled before. This is a dark, blurry mess of a position you've put yourself in. The two of you made a choice not to see where you’re going (out of fear, the desire for danger, or even for the sake of spontaneous fun).



But we often forget that it's impossible to be in a duct-taped, moving vehicle without a sense of underlying anxiety. This is where your conscious mind, the common sense that you try so hard to ignore, wonders, “Where is this going? Where are we? What am I doing here? What’s coming towards us? Are we heading the right way? This isn’t safe.” You can’t see the conditions of the road. You don’t know if you’re going too fast or too slow. And who’s driving? Who decides when it’s too dangerous? When is it time to pull over? You can’t even tell him how you feel because you openly decided to get into a car with duct tape on the windows!!! You helped him create this deathtrap. He didn’t force you into it. He called, and you showed up.



You’re stuck. Too much confusion. Too many questions. Too much blurriness. No visibility. What’s the point of a road trip where you can’t look out the window and enjoy the progression from state to state? If I’m not completely comfortable, then the relationship is not for me. I want to be in car where I can see the view. I want to take pride in how far we’ve come. I want to be able to voice how I feel all the time. I don’t need to see the final destination, but I want to see how we got there.


Love,

Zabrinah



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